Sunday, September 12, 2004

No verbs

The latest theory of the cause of the world's ills? Too many distracting and ostentatious verbs.

Always full of zip, those nasty words. Always tense and in agreement with this or that. Too perfect or too pluperfect. Never a still moment -- like a runaway train, forever in motion. How crass! How 20th century!

For this millennium, a new approach to writing. A fresh pace and rhythm of language for this era of multitasking and hyperlinks. An alternative to the bloated bounciness of contemporary literature, those darling "new classics" larded with 500 or 600 pages of infinitives, participles and the subjunctive. The turn, in the words of one literary critic, away from the style of Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith to self-restraint and choice.